Medical electronic devices have become indispensable. Such devices may include a hearing aid as well. A hearing aid is a device for aiding an individual in regard to his or her hearing. It may be used to compensate a hearing loss, namely a conventional acoustic hearing aid amplifying sound, or a cochlear implant that electrically stimulates nerve cells or a bone conduction hearing aid. It may also be a hearing protection device which helps individuals to hear without damage in noisy environments. It may also be a tinnitus treatment device.
These devices may routinely be required to provide a notification or alert function in response to different operating conditions of these devices. For example, it is desirable for a hearing aid to provide notification for scenarios such as energy level of battery providing operating power to the hearing aid falling below a threshold, one of the components of the hearing aid performing sub-optimally, hearing aids in a binaural hearing aid system establishing a communicative coupling/decoupling, hearing aid transmitter unit or receiver unit failing to transmit or receive signals, feedback leakage exceeding beyond the permissible limit, etc. Similarly, other scenarios requiring notification may also be contemplated.
Such notifications are particularly useful when the hearing aid user includes children. One exemplary scenario includes hearing impaired children using wireless system for education, it may be very difficult for the caretaker to know whether the wireless system is actually working properly. Especially small children cannot report whether their receiver system is functional, thus a visual notification that the individual receiver unit is functional and is receiving properly may greatly improve ease of use for the caretaker.
For providing visual notification, the hearing aids are typically fitted with a light source such as a light emitting diode (LED). However, such LED is typically adapted to provide illumination of a specific color. Therefore, in order to increase type of visual notification signals using LEDs, the general approach may include to provide more number of LEDs wherein each LED typically provides illumination of a specific color. With such approach, the number of notifications is typically equal to number of LEDs emitting different colored light. Unfortunately, in order to produce a good number of notifications, this solution requires incorporating a large number of LEDs within a rather small sized hearing aid. This makes manufacturing of the hearing aid cumbersome and inclusion of a large number of LEDs also restricts design choice because space availability for other components is compromised. Thus, the goal of designing a smaller sized discreet hearing aid becomes challenging.
The disclosure proposes a solution that overcomes the aforementioned drawbacks.